Manhattan bites into high-grade gold at Canadian Jaws target

Manhattan Gold Corporation has kicked another goal at the company's Hook Lake project in Canada, with its maiden drilling campaign continuing to deliver high-grade gold and significantly expanding the footprint of its flagship Jaws prospect.

The company’s latest results include a shallow, high-grade hit of 15.24 metres grading an impressive 5.35 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from just 35.05m downhole, contained within a broader 74.67 metre zone running 1.61g/t gold.

A second hole returned 7.62m at a hefty 7.05g/t gold from 82.3m within a wider 51.82-metre section at 1.88g/t gold. The hole also confirmed mineralisation at depth with 24.38m grading 1.15g/t gold from 204.22m.

The drilling has materially expanded the footprint of the gold-bearing system at Jaws, materially extending it by more than 290m to the northeast and taking the total drill-tested strike length to 588m. Notably, the system has also been confirmed to a vertical depth of 223m, well below the extent of any historic drilling.

The results are the latest in a string of successes from Manhattan’s first-ever drill program at the project, which sits in the tier-one mining jurisdiction of Nunavut. Last month, the company’s first assays from Jaws returned an impressive intercept of 41.15 metres at 4.66g/t gold.

Manhattan Gold Corporation technical advisor Eric Sondergaard said: “These results materially strengthen the case for both scale and grade at Jaws.We are now seeing grade, width and scale come together across a system that remains open at depth and along strike. Jaws is developing into a substantially larger and more compelling gold system than the historic work suggested.”

Manhattan bought the Hook Lake project in mid-2025, picking up ground that hosted a historical, non-JORC “foreign” estimate from the late 1980's of 3.4 million tonnes grading 2.38g/t gold for 285,000 ounces at Jaws.

The 665-square-kilometre Hook Lake project runs along the underexplored Rankin-Ennadai greenstone belt, a geological feature that houses mining giant Agnico Eagle’s 6.7-million-ounce Meliadine operation, 225 kilometres to the northeast and one of Canada's largest gold mines. Peers such as B2Gold and BG Gold are also advancing programs, underscoring the district-scale appetite for new ounces.

The company’s thesis was that modern exploration could build substantially on the old data, and its maiden drill program appears to be proving the point, consistently delivering thicker and higher-grade intercepts than the historic work.

With Jaws now shaping up as a significantly larger and higher-grade gold system than historic work suggested, Manhattan is pushing ahead with metallurgical test work to lay the groundwork for future technical studies.

And the news flow looks set to continue, with a further 14 drill holes from the current campaign still at the laboratory pending assay. The pending assays also include the first-ever drill tests of the company's Spectre and Lotus prospects. Spectre is a high-grade volcanogenic massive sulphide target where historic drilling in 1974 returned impressive polymetallic hits including 10.51 metres at 2.91 per cent copper, 6.70 per cent zinc, 95.67g/t silver and 1.04g/t gold.

The Lotus prospect, described as a “Jaws-style” gold target, has never been drilled despite rock chip sampling in 2025 returning high-grade results of 8.01g/t gold and 2660g/t silver.

It’s one thing to pick up a project with a historical resource; however, it’s another to consistently punch out intercepts that are thicker and higher in grade than the old drilling. With a rapidly expanding mineralised footprint at Jaws and a conga line of assays still in the lab, the odds on Manhattan’s Canadian gold punt appear to be shortening fast.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au